Tom Morrissey (Progressive Democrats)

I move:

That Seanad Éireann

—notes the commitment of the Government to take a comprehensive set of actions to address the rate of injuries and deaths on our roads;

—acknowledges, specifically, the commitment of the Government to take measures to improve road safety and driver behaviour;

—welcomes the work of Government Departments and agencies to address the serious issue of road safety;

—notes with regret the loss of 118 lives on Irish roads to date this year; and

—urges the Government to continue its commitment to, and investment in, efforts to reduce the number of road traffic accidents on Irish roads.

It gives me great pleasure to propose this motion to the House. It is needed and timely, although I must admit that the statistics that will be referred to over the coming hours will make for extremely depressing listening. I would like to thank Mr. Eddie Shaw and the National Safety Council for their contributions on this issue. Mr. Shaw addressed the national conference of the Progressive Democrats recently and his views and insights should be compulsory listening for all. Those views are integral to my statement in the House this evening.

This motion was proposed in order to reaffirm Government commitments, to commend the work done to date, but most importantly, to save 140 lives this year. That is the central issue. The motion refers to the 118 people who have been killed on our roads so far this year. This is a brutal reality, but the true extent of the carnage is worse than that. For every fatality on our roads, eight more people are seriously injured. This means that since January 2005, there have been over 1,000 people either seriously injured or killed on our roads. Another way of looking at this is that 3,500 people will be killed or seriously injured by the end of this year. That is the context for this motion.

I wish to refer to the current road safety strategy, which is not being implemented at the necessary pace. The delay is due to the cross-departmental approach to addressing road safety. The Departments of Transport, Justice, Equality and Law Reform and Finance all play a crucial role in road safety. The problem is, however, that individual Departments cannot see the full benefits of resources they have invested in road safety measures. I will return to this point later.

When Mr. Shaw addressed our party conference in Cork this month, one point he made stuck in my mind and I wish to share it with the Members of this House. Members should keep the following three figures in their minds: 40, 30 and 20. The figure of 40 represents the number of people killed on our roads every month in 1997; 30 refers to the number of people killed on our roads, per month, in 2003; and 20 is the international best practice kill rate that we are aiming for. I use the term "kill rate" deliberately. There is no point in toying with euphemisms or pleasantries; people are being killed.

Members might ask the reason we are targeting a kill rate of 20 per month rather than a kill rate of zero. We must accept that transport and travelling has a cost. We have 97,000 km. of motorway, 1.9 million licensed vehicles and 2.5 million drivers, which carries a terrible cost. Given the level of activity on our roads, the cost is 20 fatalities per month.

We must look to experience in other locations for hope. The best practices in the world are in Victoria and Queensland, Australia. We can take steps to emulate those practices but we must remove certain barriers. The first barrier to be removed is finance. Narrow cost-benefit analyses have meant that our road strategy is progressing too slowly. The cost of implementing the strategy across Departments is clear, but the cost of not implementing it is not obvious enough. The UN has recognised this problem and produced a report on road carnage. To take the member states of the EU prior to accession, 45,000 people were killed in road accidents across the 15 countries in one year. There were 1.7 million people injured and of that number, 1 million went into acute hospitals through accident and emergency departments. This is a war by any other name and we must think of the costs this war incurs beyond the human misery.

My first critical message is that speed kills. There will be many complex arguments this evening, but if only one message persists, it must be that speed kills. A recent experiment in Gloucestershire, England, proves this point emphatically. The speed limit there was reduced from 30 mph to 20 mph in some areas and the number of collisions involving pedestrians dropped by 80%. So far this year, 20 pedestrians have been killed on Irish roads.

My second critical point relates to human error in accidents. Road accidents are often viewed as pertaining to other people. This is not surprising because only one in six people will ever experience a serious collision. Statistically, an individual would have to drive 3.8 million miles before he or she could expect to be in a serious accident. Naturally it appears to be a matter for others when one looks at those figures. Accidents, from an individual point of view, are freak occurrences. However, from the wider viewpoint, accidents are not freak occurrences but are depressingly predictable, regular and stable.

Approximately 40 people are killed every month. Driver error is a key problem that accounts for approximately 90% of all accidents. The most vulnerable group is males aged 17 to 30. It is not simply the case that people in this group are bad drivers, as some would suggest, but they are inexperienced drivers. They do not realise the implications of driving even 5 km/h too fast. Inexperience, coupled with exceeding the speed limit by 5 km/h, can be catastrophic. When one adds inexperience, speed, drink, drugs and lifestyle issues together, one arrives at the particular phenomenon of high death rates between 6 p.m. on Fridays and 6 a.m. on Mondays. Regrettably, due to the bank holiday, that will be 6 a.m. on Tuesday of next week.

My third point is that enforcement alone will not address this issue. Education is the only hope for this target group. That brings me to the issue of traffic policing. Enforcement works best when one tells people what one is trying to achieve — what is being done and why. Openness, not gardaí in hedges or hidden speed cameras tell people what is happening. That is a critical point Research shows that the public will support tough enforcement if it knows that it will save lives.

We can save lives. The 40, 30, 20 figures that I mentioned are not an idealised calculation by a mathematician. We did it in this country. We attained best international standards in Ireland from November 2002 to the end of February 2003.

Why did we do it then? We had just introduced the penalty points system, and what a momentous change that brought about. Many drivers slowed down just a little. It is as simple as that. Over that period we had a kill rate of just 21 per month. Now it is back in the 30s again, brutal evidence of what has happened, but it is the reality. The problem is that the penalty points system was built on inadequate technology. It unfortunately was not up to scratch. Drivers have realised this and speeding has again increased. Until the technology is up to scratch, the system will not reduce the kill rate, as we would like. The overlap of events such as the introduction of penalty points and the level of accidents can be startling.

We cannot let extraneous events lead to more deaths on our roads. Less enforcement means more deaths. If Garda resources are strained, as for example during the EU Presidency, we will see more accidents. We need to face up to this and to deal with it. We need to return to the post-penalty points model, but with adequate technology and this time we need to sustain it. That will cost money. The benefits and savings are not immediately obvious, particularly to the Department of Finance. However, the savings are there. With reduced accident levels, we free up resources in the health system. Remember, a serious road accident effectively shuts down a hospital accident and emergency department.

When accident rates fell in the summer of 2003, hospitals saw a reduction of some 50% in spinal injuries. Beaumont Hospital reported a major reduction in attendances. Health boards across the country recorded reduced numbers in accident and emergency units and these were real savings. This is where the importance of the interdepartmental approach lies. When it comes to road safety initiatives, the Department of Transport sees the costs, as does the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Department of Finance. It is a scandal that we have no budgetary model to estimate the savings from safety strategies. I suspect major corporations have. It is not realistic to see the traffic corps, for example, simply as a cost. The consultants, Goodbody, estimated in 2004 that a single road fatality cost the State €2 million. The thousands of seriously injured also put a cost on the State. The cost to society of all road collisions is put at €1.1 billion. We must return to the target figure of 20. We must commit more funds and this time ensure that it happens. We can return to best international practice, if that happens.

To return to the target figure of 20 a few things are needed. First is the political will and we have that. The National Safety Council and others have recognised this. Local authorities must face up to their responsibilities. They have control over speed limits and these must be appropriate and consistent to win the support of the driving public. They set the limits and this is an onerous responsibility. The Garda enforce these and the public must be supportive. Limits must be appropriate and consistent.

We need tough enforcement. The public, as I have indicated, will support it, if the initiative is open and shown to reduce the death rate. As legislators we might face criticism for sanctioning tough measures, but we must not shirk from doing so. The minority who criticise us are strong in the media. The majority, who are served by the measures, are for the most part silent. Not all drivers are criminals, but all criminals are drivers.

Finally, we must work harder on the safety strategy. That is why the motion urges the Government to reaffirm its commitment and investment on these issues. The safety strategy must be planned, funded, resourced and evaluated. That is the only way to achieve the goal and save 140 lives every year.